JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR BULLSHIT, OR, HEY! THAT'S NOT AYATOLLAH KHOMEINI, IT'S CAT STEVENS!

REMEMBER CAT STEVENS? The platinum-selling, soulful-voiced Brit whose career once rivaled that of Elton John? Back in the early '70s, Stevens was the man. His songs seemed to play in an endless loop on local AM stations across the country. "Wild World," "Father and Son," "Moonshadow." Good stuff. Then, one day -- "POOF." Stevens suddenly vanished from the charts.

In a move that left both music fans and record execs alike reeling, Stevens ditched his lucrative recording career; grew a cleric's beard, and converted to Islam. Stevens became a devout Muslim. Changing his name to "Yusuf Islam," he swapped a life of gold records and sold out concert venues, for the higher calling of building Mosques and Muslim schools in his native Britain. Why, we wondered???

I vividly recall a television interviewer putting that very question to the newly converted Stevens. The Rock God whose poster had once papered the bedroom walls of teenage girls all across America, now more closely resembling an Ayatollah, responded in this way ... one day, while reading the Quran, he'd happened upon the story of "Yusuf;" found it so moving, so heart-rending, that he immediately realized it could only have been written by the hand of God (Allah) himself. Stevens was converted on the spot.

WOW! I thought. That must be one helluva friggin' story -- one so powerful, so profound, it actually altered the course of a man's life. As a writer, I was intrigued. I had to check it out. Next day I headed down to my local bookstore, found a copy of the Quran, and read the story of the Prophet Yusuf. Guess what? Turns out the story of Yusuf is actually none other than that of "Joseph" from Genesis (remember "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat?" -- Yeah, that dude). One and the same. The story that moved Cat Stevens to abandon a multimillion dollar career and convert wholeheartedly to Islam did not originate in the Quran; nor was it uniquely rooted in the Muslim faith. It was, in fact, the product of Judaism; a story found in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible.

Like Stevens, I experienced a life-altering event; an epiphany of such mind-bending clarity, that I now understood the pure, shimmering irrationality -- the utter absurdity -- of all religious belief. Christians, Muslims and Jews all trying to kill each other not because they were reading from a different book -- but because they were reading from the VERY SAME book! The same made-up, antiquated stories written by a different hand; told in a different tongue. And for but one of these simple, unremarkable stories, a man had immersed himself in a faith which hadn't authored it. If only Yusuf Islam -- son of a an Orthodox Greek father and Baptist mother; raised as a Roman Catholic -- had bothered to check.